These individuals know not the joy of frying an egg on the sidewalk and then eating it, or of chomping down an Easter egg, shell and all, until their lips are stained brown from a combination of food colorings.

Of course, they would love to eat eggs—who wouldn't want to crack open a tiny rock and ingest whatever weird substance could be found inside—but they cannot. They are allergic.

Now, the BBC reports, food researchers say these poor eggless saps (egg allergies are believed to affect up to 2.5 percent of children, though many outgrow it by age 5) may be closer than ever to discovering the joys of the Incredible Edible Egg.

A study of 55 children aged 5-11 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that, after 22 months of daily consumption of tiny amounts of powdered egg (ultimately building up to about a third of one egg), 75 percent of the kids observed were able to eat the equivalent of two eggs without reacting.

When the participants were retested four to six weeks after stopping treatment, it was found that about a third of them (28 percent) could still eat egg without reacting and were considered "allergy-free."

Researcher Dr. Stacie Jones says these findings "provide some hope" that similar therapies could be used to help overcome food allergies in the future. She also explains that the real victors of this experiment were not those children who can now eat eggs just like their celebrity heros, but, rather, their hyper-nervous parents:

Reducing these kids' allergic response to egg also lessened parental anxiety over how their children might react if accidentally exposed to egg at school or at someone else's house.

Dr. Jones stressed that parents should only attempt to feed their children eggs under the guidance of a licensed professional. (Unless their kids can already eat eggs with no problem, or believe life isn't worth living without a little danger.)